


Initial Stress Testing

by Nemonus



Category: Red vs Blue
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 10:27:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1547345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemonus/pseuds/Nemonus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carolina looks out for York, even if she inflicted the damage herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Initial Stress Testing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mumblybee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblybee/gifts).



“This will be the first AI test,” the Director said. He sounded bored and tired. The Director needed coffee and a good joke, but he wasn’t going to get it. He thought this was a serious test, York and Delta against Carolina to see whether the AI’s presence could tip York over onto the second slot on the board, but York couldn’t stay straight-laced for that long if he tried.  
  
Winning, that was another matter. York might win. He acknowledged this with a calm mental shrug. He and D were getting good. The little AI was quick, faster than York was, and York’s own spatial awareness turned up to one thousand after he got used to processing the voice in his head. If he could think around that voice, just sink into it and let it act as one more sense, he could see out of the back of his head.   
  
Carolina, though, she was tense and he still wasn’t sure he could beat her. She always looked slow until she moved. She stood like a pillar in the center of the arena, like a blue bloom grown from the black metal surface. The other four Freelancers had stood there a minute before, listening as the Director lectured them about the experimental nature of the AI and the use that York had given Delta.   
  
Now, the memories of them were just ghosts, and York knew that his friends were standing instead on the viewing platform above him, opposite the Director’s control room. Carolina waited now, alone except for York opposite her. He jogged in place.  
  
“You have been issued equal weapons and ammunition,” the Director said from above. “The fight will end when one soldier is incapacitated. FILSS, start the countdown.”  
  
The ship’s AI did.  
  
York had not used a plasma rifle since he was last rated for it, and the weapon felt heavy and clumsy in his hand. Carolina held it as naturally as if she had been born with it, but York couldn’t help thinking about how ridiculously purple the weapon was, how the curve on the top made it look friendly, how the tube that delivered TTR paint packets had been inexpertly soldered into the mouth of the gun.   
  
FILSS reached “one” in her countdown before he stopped thinking about that, but he worked best on the fly anyway.   
  
One paint packet sailed over his head as Carolina shot high and ducked low. Then she was next to him, and her left fist bounced off his right shoulder.   
  
“Warning,” Delta said. “Incoming fire.”   
  
“I know, D, thanks.” York squeezed the trigger, but Carolina was already moving, crossing in front of him as the plasma burst splashed across the room. For a second the two of them locked up, face to face, stalled in an awkward in-between space that meant, York knew in the back of his head, that they knew one another’s rhythm too well, that they had broken it now not by being too dissimilar, but by defending and attacking at the same time.   
  
He felt Delta calculate trajectories in his head, and with a mechanical instinct deceptively human the AI plotted a course from York’s fist to the patch of black material under Carolina’s arm.   
  
York punched out toward her, but a moment later his elbow strained as Carolina caught it, pinched the joint between her fingers, and twisted. Overextended muscles twinged. Delta shouted again.  
  
“Warning.”   
  
“Activate the healing unit,” York said.  
  
“Your body is not severely compromised,” Delta said.  
  
“Yeah, well.” York raised his gun toward Carolina’s other arm.  
  
Carolina tipped her head in a moment of curiosity before shoving her gun hand under his armpit and throwing him over her shoulder. He landed hard, his hair scratching at his skin as his skull shifted the tiny amount it could inside his helmet. The floor rocked underneath his shoulder rigs. Even before he’d landed, though, he pointed his gun between his knees and fired, hitting Carolina once on the collar before she almost blurred out of the way.  
  
“I told you, D.” York groaned as he lay back on the ground, relaxing for just a second before rolling backward over his shoulder.   
  
“Your armor took the brunt of the fall,” Delta said. York could have sworn there was some smugness in his metallic voice. He stood up, bouncing on his toes again, feeling only a slight ache in his left elbow.   
  
Carolina, two meters away now, pinwheeled toward him. She flipped twice, showing off, somehow keeping the mouth of the gun pointed at him.   
  
Wait for it...York thought, but then changed his idea from vague to specific with a quickness that surprised even him. “Hey D, tell me exactly when she’s going to hit.”  
  
“If you stay where you are?”  
  
“Yes!”  
  
“Now!  
  
York caught Carolina’s ankle plate, slipped, and gripped the armor nub on the other side. He felt his whole body start to follow her momentum, and his stomach lurched. The room spun as he let it, kicking into his own parallel cartwheel. He saw Carolina’s face upside down,  drifting past him, her masked expression as straight and sharp as the lines on the floor.  
  
They skidded to a stop together, exchanged punches and bludgeoned with the backs of their pistols. Carolina stretched a long leg forward and hooked him under the knee, leaning in just far enough that he teetered.  
  
He took the opportunity. “That was cool, right? What we just did there.”   
  
She shot him twice in the chest. He saw flecks of purple paint bounce up against his visor and staggered backward, raising his own gun in both hands. Delta was telling him she was at two o’clock before he thought to ask. His first shot hit right next to her foot, but her next engulfed both of his hands and his gun. She ran forward and he crouched, ready when she came with a kick that slammed into her side under her shoulder rig. She took it, though, danced to the side and hit him again on the chest with both hands fisted around her gun.   
  
He rocked his head forward, slamming his helmet against hers, and stunned her the moment she pulled the trigger. Paint built up on his chest, and his shield readout took a dive toward the red. Reeling, he heard Delta say “Now,” again.  
  
Eyes still pointed at the ceiling, he swung his hands blindly and felt the hunk of paint connect with her gun.   
  
Carolina slashed him to the ground, one arm pinning his throat, Delta quietly intoning warnings in his head as she grabbed her gun from off of the floor and pressed the mouth against his faceplate. It hovered over his right eye before she sent it drifting left, a momentary, almost embarrassed hesitation. His arms were pinned down across his own body, her left knee pressing down on the angular top of his wrist guard. He let his legs go slack.   
  
Delta flashed red from somewhere on his left side.   
  
“Okay, D,” York said. “Good try. Go team.”  
  
Carolina pushed up and away from him, extending a hand only after she straightened up.   
  
“Very funny,” he said, waving his hands, still engulfed in a blob of paint.   
  
“Right, right.” She kneeled down and started pounding on the hardening paint, breaking it into brittle chunks as the other Freelancers filed into the room.   
  
He gripped her wrist and rose, talking as soon as he got his breath. “Thanks, boss. So, I think D and I did adequate.”   
  
“Return the unit to the medical bay for appraisal,” the Director said, and York looked up for the onyx window from which the Director would be speaking.   
  
“Aright. Guess I’ve gotta do that.” He looked at Carolina. “Are you coming?”  
  
“Was the test successful?” she asked the disembodied voice of the Director. “I’ve proven that one Freelancer can beat another equipped with an AI.”  
  
“York and Delta are not fully integrated.” The voice returned clipped but not angry. The Director sounded lazy, York thought, and maybe a rest would be good for both of them - his skin was stinging where tiny flecks of paint had bounced between his neck seal and his helmet, and his left elbow still felt oddly elastic as he shook his hands to rid them of more paint and flexed his hand around the plasma rifle.  
  
“More tests will be conducted,” the Director said.   
  
Carolina looked up at the CO for one more moment before putting her head down and cupping York’s elbow. “Let’s go.”  
  
“Ow,” York said before he had even thought about the fact that it was his right elbow she was holding, and she looked back at him even as she started walking forward, pulling him with her. North tried to get a word in edgewise as they left, but Carolina beat him to it.   
  
“Did the healing unit do its job?” she asked York. He couldn’t tell from her tone whether she was angry at him for not having used it or concerned about whether he had been badly hurt. He guessed that it was an attempt toward the former to disguise the latter, though, if he knew her well at all.   
  
“I didn’t activate it until after you knocked me down the first time,” he said.   
  
“Huh.”   
  
The medical suite wasn’t far, but the locker rooms were closer. A white-clothed tech arrived as if out of nowhere before they reached it, holding her hands out as if expecting Delta to step into them.   
  
“Y-your AI program, please,” she said nervously.  
  
“Thanks, D. Good luck out there,” York said before disengaging his helmet. There was a slight sense of distance between himself and Delta’s various sensory systems, a little film placed over his sixth sense, when the helmet contact points were pulled. Clumsily since the paint was still gelled onto his hands, he pinched the sides of the chip slotted into the back of his neck with a familiarity that might have been a surprise to the medic if York was reading her expression right. He held her eyes a moment longer than he intended as he felt Delta’s cold presence slip out of the back of his head, messing with his own focus. He was suddenly a lot more aware of the blankness on his left side. It would sure be nice for his elbow if he could see it.   
  
Then he dropped the chip into the medic’s gloved hand. “Take care of him.”  
  
“You come see us too if you’re hurt,” the medic said brusquely, and left.  
  
York shrugged at her back.  
  
“You want to go check yourself out?” Carolina said.  
  
York couldn’t resist; he raised his arms and posed as if admiring the gold shine of his own armor. “Why yes, I - ”  
  
She furrowed her brow, but only slightly before her expression bounced back to completely neutral. “You shouldn’t even need field dressings. Just some Aspirin, maybe some ice.”  
  
“Yeah. I’m okay.” He stepped into the locker room, expecting her to move on past the door. Instead she walked in with him and pointed at a central bench. “We’ve gotta get some of that paint off before you lock up the armor. It’ll be heavy and annoying.”   
  
His lips started to form the sounds to tell her that he didn’t need help, but his brain rebelled and plopped him down on the bench. “Thanks, boss.”   
  
“You don’t always have to call me that,” she said. She took a health pack out of her own locker and sat it down beside him, then circled around behind him and felt for the latches underneath his shoulder pack. “Help me out with this.”  
  
He did, lifting the armor over his head. They usually had machines used to do this, things that looked like centrifuges with robot arms, but the armor had to be able to lift itself, and between Carolina’s and York’s gauntlets the chest and back plates came away in two pieces without trouble.   
  
He unsealed his right gauntlet quick enough but struggled with the left, between the paint and a slight blurriness in both of his eyes. Carolina came to the rescue, bashing at the paint until pink flecks snowed across the floor. She removed both gauntlets and set them on the ground, leaving his hand plates sealed to the undersuit. He shook his right hand and raised it, realized that he was about to rub at his left eye and tugged at his hair instead.   
  
“Look, I don’t want you to think I can’t maintain my own equipment...” York said.   
  
“I’m not going to take your top off for you,” Carolina said.   
  
So he peeled the suit off his left arm and she brought the health pack around to the other side, nicking his knee with the edge, and gripped his skin on either side of an elbow that still felt weird but doesn’t hurt like it was broken.   
  
“You’ll be fine.” Her fingers tapped on his skin next to a zig-zagging vein, suit seams instead of nails punctuating the soft pads. She did not meet his eyes. “Mobility?”  
  
She stood up, and he rotated his forearm, trying not to let his brain spiral around into wondering whether this counted as flirting and whether they were alone. They were not, really, even if the glass was only transparent on this side of the wall and mirrored by the scoreboard. Delta was gone but that didn’t mean York was alone, alone with her, eye-level with aquamarine, bluebell, ocean, whatever freaking color he was supposed to call her blue. He could think about that all day.  
  
She sat down next to him, put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “You’re okay.”  
  
This set off warning alarms. She remained on his left side, first of all, and she’d stopped doing that the day he lost his eye. He said, “Are you?”   
  
He turned, propping one knee on the bench between them so that he could sit comfortably and keep her in his full field of vision. Honesty visibly crossed her face, and she make a concerted effort to keep it there.   
  
Carolina said, “You know, I thought this fight would prove something. I thought that I would feel good about beating an AI.” She chuckled, looked down at the floor. “But I don’t. I want you to get better.”   
  
She pressed her fist against his arm, not a punch but an affectionate jab that lasted a little too long to be brotherly. “And I had fun. That cartwheel? That was pretty cool.”   
  
“Yeah, yeah! I thought so. I couldn’t have done it without you.” He rallied as he talked, hiding his surprise that she had relaxed enough to have fun. It was so rare for her to rate herself well, to see what others saw when they looked at her, that when she did he wanted to capture it and keep it. York rarely concerned himself with his place on the board, but Carolina always did - but here she was, in their alone but not-alone space.  
  
Carolina stood and put the health pack back in her locker, pausing to look at him for a long moment as she stood on his right side. “I’m going to give my report if he wants it.” York did not doubt that ‘he’ meant the Director.   
  
York, dizzy from proximity to her, sketched a salute. “I’ll be right behind you. After I, you know.” He tugged at his undersuit, flashed her a smile designed to fluster. “Put on clothes.”   
  
She stopped at the door. “I know you will.”  
  
He said, “See you around, Carolina,” and turned back to the locker room, throwing his hands in the air with a shrug as he suddenly wondered how he was going to pick his right gauntlet up and get to cleaning. 


End file.
